Devin Ebanks spent last summer preparing to become one of the top players in the CHSAA as a junior.

Things did not work out as the 6-foot-7 standout had hoped. Ebanks struggled through a somewhat disappointing junior season and followed that up by getting tossed out of Bishop Loughlin for disciplinary reasons.

So now he’s at The Patterson School in North Carolina, where he hopes to become one of the top players in the nation – again, as a junior.

“Last year was tough,” said Ebanks, who has played extremely well over the summer and is at Reebok’s ABCD Camp at Fairleigh Dickinson in Teaneck, N.J. “This year I’ll be able to focus more and I think I’ll be more mature for college.”

Of course, one of the reasons that figures to happen for Ebanks is that, like many others, he has reclassified and will play two more years in high school instead of one.

“I have a lot to work on,” said Ebanks, who was already considered a major recruit before making the decision. “I want to be able to show everyone what I can do.”

It is becoming increasingly rare for the best high school players to go to college without being reclassified at some point – or getting left back in earlier grades. And college coaches, even those who don’t necessarily approve of the trend, admit it puts players at an advantage.

“It naturally helps a player to be a year older, a year bigger, a year stronger, when he gets here,” said one college coach. “So it helps us, too.”

Not everyone who has done it is pleased.

“I wish I was going to college,” said Thomas Manzano. “I didn’t want to go through this, but I did it to myself.”

The guard was a virtual no-show at Canarsie growing up before finally landing at Genesis One, a prep school in Mississippi, over a year ago. Now that the NCAA has questioned the school’s credentials, Manzano is looking for another school and hoping that his credits from last year are accepted.

“This is not about me becoming a better player,” Manzano said. “This is about me making up for the things I didn’t do before. I’m 18 and if I could do it over again, I’d make sure I was going somewhere to college by now.”

*

Dwan McMillan hopes to follow in Eugene Harvey‘s footsteps. The former Boys & Girls guard is leaving the Brooklyn school and would like to land at St. Benedict’s (N.J.), making the same move as the Seton Hall-bound Harvey.

“After I talked to him, I really wanted to go there,” McMillan said. “It worked out for him.”

Boys & Girls head coach Ruth Lovelace is pushing her star to make the change, as she did before Harvey left.